Osborne Clarke advises fintech platform Freemarket on Baird Capital investment

Published by

Peter Davison

Lawyers at Osborne Clarke in Bristol have advised fintech platform Freemarket on a growth capital investment from Baird Capital.

London-based Freemarket is a leading fintech platform for regulated B2B cross-border payments and currency exchange. Its global banking network and innovative technology platform enables customers to send payments and funds efficiently to over 100 countries in 140 currencies, removing cross-border payments complexities, improving transparency and increasing efficiency.

The investment from Baird Capital’s Global Private Equity Fund will support Freemarket’s continuing fast growth and international expansion, as well as providing a partial cash-out to existing shareholders.

Osborne Clarke advised Freemarket on the deal with Bristol-based partner Tracey Wright advising on tax. The deal also involved a corporate team led by partner Robert Wood and including associate director Robert Pook and associates Chris Flach and James Robertson. Partner Michael Carter advised on incentives while legal director Clare Burnam provided regulatory advice.

Baird Capital was advised by Squire Patton Boggs (legal), Grant Thornton (financial, tax and regulatory diligence), Oliver Wyman (commercial diligence) and finnCap (M&A advisor).

In 2022, Freemarket was ranked number 12 in the Sunday Times Hundred and number 25 in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 programme, which celebrates and champions the UK’s fastest-growing technology businesses. Meanwhile this year, Freemarket ranked 81 in the FT1000: Europe’s Fastest Growing Companies.

Osborne Clarke’s corporate team is considered a go-to practice for many in the tech, media and comms sector, working with leading global businesses, fast-growth start-ups and market challengers. The team advises at every stage of company development across all corporate issues, from equity and debt fundraisings to M&A, IPOs and JVs.

Peter Davison

Peter Davison is deputy editor of The Business Magazine. He has spent his life in journalism – doing work experience in newsrooms in and around Bristol while still at school, and landing his first job on a local newspaper aged 19. By 28 he was the youngest newspaper editor in the country. An early advocate of online news, he spent the first years of the 2000s telling his bosses that the internet posed both the biggest opportunity and greatest threat to the newspaper industry and the art of journalism. He was right on both counts. Since 2006 he has enjoyed a career as a freelance journalist. He lives in rural Wiltshire with one wife, two children, and three cats.